The Lists that Govern my Life

It's been 50 weeks since the the US began shutting down due to the coronavirus pandemic.  Dallin and I went out to eat on a Saturday and then two days later all restaurants in Bloomington closed for the foreseeable future. We cancelled a weekend trip to Chicago with the expectation that "things might be better in a couple weeks." We had just sent out most of our wedding invites for a May celebration and were still somewhat optimistic we'd be able to party with friends and family as planned. The only accurate foresight I had was the sinking feeling I wouldn't get to spend the summer in Austria with Dallin teaching on a study abroad.  COVID-19 has disrupted our lives and turned them upside down. Many of us have lost loved ones, or know those who have lost loved ones, or have dealt with other devastating health consequences. We have all had to deal with cancelled plans, lost experiences, and adjusted expectations.  On top of those, we've encountered days, weeks, ...

I moved to Bloomington just over three years ago to start a graduate program in Germanic Studies. I want to say I was excited and optimistic, but in reality, I was mostly terrified. Though I had a break for a church mission in Germany, I’d spent five truly wonderful years in Provo, Utah, going to school and then working.  My time in Provo had not always been easy, but it was where I felt I became a real adult. It was the first place where I’d felt deep loneliness, where I sought God behind apartment complexes when I felt too socially awkward to make new friends. It was also the first place I’d learned what it felt like to be part of a community, to understand what it meant that we all belonged to the family of God. It was where my faith faltered and then grew and continued to change in unexpected ways. It was where I encountered people and ideas that challenged my previous perceptions of the world. Provo had become a social, emotional, and spiritual home for me. A place that made m...

The Other and Another: Learning to Recognize and Embrace Difference From Paige Payne I was introduced to the term Othering as an undergraduate in a history class. Ironically, I can’t remember which history class, but I was obsessed with the concept. Did I learn about Othering while discussing Japanese internment camps as a freshman and visiting one in Delta, Utah? Or was it looking at pictures of Huns and noticing how subhuman they looked? Was it talking about Jewish pogroms throughout Europe? About the Holocaust? About the physically and mentally disabled who were sterilized and killed under the rise of Nazis? Was it learning about slavery? Was it learning about colonialism?  Othering refers to marking an individual or group as irreconcilably different and then perceiving and treating them as inferior or as an outsider. Othering is what drew me to classes about American slavery and Modern African history as I struggled to make sense of how people could have...

I did a reflective post after each of my first two years of grad school ( Year One Done and Year Two Through ), so even if I'm a little late, I thought I'd document a Year Three, in Love as Could Be . I've included some journal quotes for your enjoyment, marked in quotes. After spending last summer in Utah teaching a German term course at BYU ( which I LOVED ) and trying to get over a difficult breakup ( which SUCKED ), I returned to Indiana not sure what to expect for this third year in Bloomington. A lot of what happened this year was shaped by an encounter with a new IU graduate student. I showed up to church on the first Sunday in September and after seeing this new guy, I introduced myself. His name was Dallin (which he told me was a very Mormon name, and for the first time in my life I realized Dallin was indeed a pretty Mormon name). We spent the next two and half hours making bad puns, talking about how we were both Ravenclaws, talking about our grad programs in...

A pregnant cat and a tall bookshelf can teach us a lot about perception. We'll start with the the legendary tale of "The Pregnant Stray Cat," which happened today. Which also means it's not that legendary yet, but if we pass the story along and add some embellishments, it could be one of the greatest epics of our time. Story 1: What to do with a pregnant stray cat Dallin and I were concluding an evening walk with our dog Ahsoka when Dallin spotted a very fat gray cat in our shared backyard space. He went over to say hi and we noticed that she had some scarring on her lips and walked with a pitiful limp on her back leg. She seemed pretty dirty and had many burrs stuck in her fur as well. We made two assumptions from this image: 1. She was a stray. 2. She was very pregnant.  Dallin spent the next hour sitting outside with the very-pregnant-cat, hoping that she wasn't carrying any sort of ear mites or other bug. We weren't sure what to do and were...

Friends for a Perfect Time and Season Relationships are really important to me. I believe our connections with those around us to be one of the great reasons for our existence. We are here to be here for each other--to celebrate, to mourn, to grow, to sit, to think, to explore with each other. I feel very blessed in my friendships from the past twenty seven years. This is not an inclusive list of everyone who has influenced me for good (which would be a short novel), but thank you for sharing a space with me now. And so, here is a toast to my friends, past and present.  To Bailey, one of my first friends, who taught me that stories should always have a transformative element (usually in the form of a servant girl turning into a princess). To Eshani and Kaylah, who were my best friends at a new elementary school and sure knew how to laugh.  To Melody and Susanna, my neighbors who taught me the joys of riding razor scooters, writing movie scripts, playing Poke...

Three years of grad school has taught me some things. At the risk of losing my street credit as a competent graduate student, I thought I'd share five simple steps to help anyone sound like an academic: 1. While others are pontificating, make the sound "mmhm!" and nod emphatically. 2. Chuckle knowingly when someone makes an esoteric joke, even if you don't know the context. 3. Furrow your eyebrows periodically as if grappling with some hefty thought. 4. Turn names as adjectives as frequently as possible (i.e. Hegelian, Marxist, Kantian...). 5. When at a loss for words, say something like, "I don't think we're considering the spatial temporal dimension of this issue." (credit to Jake Beckert for this one) And that's it. Now you too are qualified to be in a humanities PhD program.